Gov. Quinn has asked Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman to conduct a study looking into the feasibility of one day connecting Amtrak Service from Union Station to O'Hare as a nonstop commuter rail as an alternative to Mayor Daley's much-criticized plan for high speed rail from the unfinished Block 37 station to the airport. Quinn sees an opportunity to connect O'Hare with proposed high-speed rail lines between St. Louis and Chicago. the goal of the study is to measure the costs of doing so and figure out the logistics. more ›

Rome may not have been built in a day, but an O'Hare runway was reworked in one eight-hour, overnight shift recently. The New York-based company, Hi-Lite Markings Inc., did the remodeling work on the central 10-28 runway, called "one of the busiest runways in the world" by the Tribune, last week. The move was part of the airport's $6.6 billion modernization project and is meant to reduce the number of intersections between runways.

About 24 Hi-Lite employees used specialized equipment to shorten the runway to 9,000 feet from 13,000 feet. First they stripped paint and then applied a fresh coat.